Archive for the ‘Communications Tools and Techniques’ Category

The loss of educated graduates has become almost an accepted fact of life in small and rural communities and is most definitely a drain on a community’s ability to develop its creative economy.

Social media, however, offers your community a powerful means of finding and reconnecting with your town’s expats, and the opportunity to provide them with reasons to come back.

Former student high school alumni groups are some of the most popular and abundant groups on Facebook. For every high school of any size there will be at least one, and often several, Facebook groups for former students to join. These are hubs for people who share common experiences to reconnect with old friends, and share memories and photos of the glory days. You’re likely a member of one or more of these groups yourself. (more…)

Congratulations! Your community has just attracted a major investment from a well-known company!

Now your publicity engine will kick into gear as your economic development department issues a news release to celebrate and exploit the good news.

But then what? If you wait until another big event happens before communicating again, you could wait a long time. In many municipalities this is exactly what happens. As a result, external communications for investment-attraction purposes are infrequent, reflecting the (out-dated) view that people would only be interested in headline news.

The world has changed. Today’s best practices, which we refer to as “Economic Development 2.0.”, demand that investment-attraction strategies are supported by ongoing, frequent communications utilizing a variety of online channels.

Daily or weekly updates should be used to keep stakeholders, prospects and residents informed, both on the good and the bad news. Posting information on all channels makes it easier to manage municipal brand perception, especially during a weak economy where (more…)

News releases used to be written for, and sent to, only the media. Usually that meant the print media, and for economic development departments it meant print media concerned with investment attraction.

But the first rule of modern news releases is that they should no longer be targeted to traditional media only. A difficult economic climate and the advent of new technologies have combined to change modern strategies toward news releases for investment-attraction purposes.

Releases need to generate optimum returns on investment, so they should be written to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. Decide beforehand what you want the release to achieve other than simply disseminating information. Do you want to impress site selectors with the dynamism of your community? Do you want local businesses and employees to continue to be confident that they are in the right place? Do you want government agencies to know about the sectors your community is fostering? In the age of the Web, all these audiences and more – potentially millions of people – have access to your release, unfiltered by the media.

You need to write for them. Write directly for your target audiences in addition to the media that you hope will also reach them. In particular, provide information that site selectors and business investors specifically look for. Present your news with accompanying data (more…)